Youtube

[mrdun]

So, China wants to control what is uploaded to Youtube. They are full of grand ideas arnt they who would want to live their?

[Don Corleone]

Well, for starters, the vast majority of people living in China were born there, so they had no say in the matter.

But China does offer some attractive aspects:

-A sense of community that is unrivaled in the world (well, perhaps Japan).
-Very safe streets. Violent crime is almost unheard of, and those who commit it are never again heard of, once the PLA catches up to them.
-Strong room for economic growth. With the right skills, it would be easy to become a millionare there.
-Delicious food. (And if you haven't been there, you have no idea what I'm talking about, no matter how good your local shop is).

And as the Chinese themselves would answer, what makes you think your government doesn't already take similar actions? They're just more subtle about it. I mean, what are all those video cameras for?

[mrdun]

Thats true you have just got to look at school internet, everything is blocked.

[Al Khalifah]

Thats true you have just got to look at school internet, everything is blocked.

It doesn't get any better when you leave I'm afraid.
I worked for (major international investment bank) and tonnes of sites were blocked. Including the org.
True you're supposed to be doing work at work, but some technical forums and such were blocked that would've been a very useful source of information.

[FactionHeir]

I was able to access most sites from there just fine and last I was there was past summer (including the ORG).
The only things I found blocked were wikipedia, bbc news and some (not all) foreign political sites. Everything else connected just fine and fast.

I think the media is just bloating this issue up larger than it really is. There are local video sharing sites already, and with just youtube gone, that isn't too big of a change. Most people there enjoy watching their videos in Chinese anway rather than in English.

The blocking mainly affects those who don't know how to get around it. Use any proxy and you can access whatever site you want unless your proxy's country is blocking some websites as well.

[Louis VI the Fat]

It doesn't get any better when you leave I'm afraid.
I worked for (major international investment bank) and tonnes of sites were blocked. Including the org.
True you're supposed to be doing work at work, but some technical forums and such were blocked that would've been a very useful source of information.

True dat. Where I worked last summer they also kept a close watch on what employees were doing on their network computers. Really fast connection they had too, what a waste. After they layed me off I dowloaded tons of the smuttiest, most depraved pr0n, almost grinding their network to a screeching halt while at it.

Actually, erm...that could've been the other way round. Now that I think about it, the laying off bit probably came last.

[Shahed]

What I HATE is youtube's 10 min vid limit.

[Bijo]

So, China wants to control what is uploaded to Youtube. They are full of grand ideas arnt they who would want to live their?

It took me some time to analyze your words to finally realize what you meant

I am still to visit this China country. Maybe even live there. Sounds like a nice country to me :P

And Sinan: what I dislike about Youtube is the bad video and audio quality (as it is severely compressed or the maker made rubbish in the first place) and the general rubbish it has anyway. Any (lower-than-)average person can upload a steaming pile of **** and affect feeble minds that will affect other feeble minds. The internet was already a space where chaos is easily put in and Youtube allows it to be worse.

Especially those music videos and their makers can be a nuisance. Someone took some video, maybe edited it a bit, slapped some music on it, this and that, blah blah, and they're done with it. Music videos -- even "professional" ones shown on MTV -- are mostly rubbish.

[shlin28]

My school's computers blocks the Org, but I got a way to circumvent it

Hint hint, Google Translate.

[TevashSzat]

Eh, China ain't so bad now. You should've seen what it was like during the Cultural Revolution or in the 60s/70s. Those times make modern age China look like paradise on earth.

As for the proxies, again its mainly for the commoners who know nothing about computers. Any half decent proxy I guess should be able to get pass it and the gov. won't even care too much unless you start becoming an activist and calling for democracy.

[Beefy187]

If they want to see youtube they always got some way around.

China is a very nice country. Delicious food and culture. Great and friendly people in general (except shanghai ) Just avoid the PLA at all cost unless theres a relative in the PLA preferbly high ranked officers

[CountArach]

Hint hint, Google Translate.

My old school eventually blocked that as well

[Mikeus Caesar]

If China wasn't so crazy about censoring everything, i'd probably go live there. Seems pretty nice.

Maybe if write to them and word my letter politely they'll give me an uncensored internet connection?

[R'as al Ghul]

Maybe if write to them and word my letter politely they'll give me an uncensored internet connection?

You could use an Australian proxy.

[Mikeus Caesar]

You could use an Australian proxy.

Bah, proxies are over-rated.

I ran my own proxy that me and a friend used at school. Slow and highly unreliable. The ones given out by peacefire to use among thousands of people are no better.

[R'as al Ghul]

I was just kidding.
I think the Tor proxy cascade works quite nice but it still brakes my 600 K/bit connection down to 30 K/bit. To bypass the Chinese wall without loosing speed you'd need a VPN tunnel.

[Mikeus Caesar]

I was just kidding.
I think the Tor proxy cascade works quite nice but it still brakes my 600 K/bit connection down to 30 K/bit. To bypass the Chinese wall without loosing speed you'd need a VPN tunnel.

VPN tunnel? Do explain more.

[KukriKhan]

VPN tunnel? Do explain more.

... in the Hard- and Software forum, since we're done with the political angle.

[Mikeus Caesar]

Cool, i got a thread moved.



Ah well, at least my interest in VPN tunnels shall be sated.

[R'as al Ghul]

VPN= Virtual Private Network.

An example:
Universities offer their students and profs. access to electronic publications. If you access an electronic publication site from the University's library, than the University's IP address authorizes you to access the file. All campus machines wil connect to the outside world by the same IP address, enabling access to electronic publications to all machines.
Now, what if a prof wants to use this service from his home?
Easy. He installs the VPN software and goes online via his private ISP.
Now the VPN client connects to the University's server and creates a digital encrypted tunnel between the private machine and the University server. All requests that the prof sends will enter the Internet when leaving the U server. The data that is transmitted between the internet and the private machine can't be read by the private ISP because it's encrypted. The U server does of course know what you're doing.
Big corporations offer the same system for their employees who have home offices.
A similar service is also available to private persons. Usualy payable by credit card. Someone who is concerned about the privacy of his data flow and who wants to maintain the speed of his line would've to make a VPN account in a country that does not filter content and does not disclose a customers data unless he's charged with a serious crime. There's a service in Sweden which will only disclose data in case of alleged child pornography swapping or anything that will result in 2+ years jail. which does not include copyright infringements.

R'as

[Mikeus Caesar]

So in other words (from my fragmented understanding of it at 1.30am in the morning) it's either

a) Your own private internet or b) magic cloaked internet what?

I'm thinking A. Amirite?

[R'as al Ghul]

... in the Hard- and Software forum, since we're done with the political angle.

Actually, this is all about politics. Freedom of speech, expression of thoughts and communication are all basic human needs and increasingly political issues.
But, I agree we've similar threads in backroom already.

[Mikeus Caesar]

Actually, this is all about politics. Freedom of speech, expression of thoughts and communication are all basic human needs and increasingly political issues.
But, I agree we've similar threads in backroom already.

Indeed, my thread that was made for moaning about Aussie censorship can also accommodate Chinese censorship and the things listed above.

[R'as al Ghul]

It's a mixture of both. "Any technology sufficiently advanced is close to magic"
You rent a new provider, so to say. The local ISP is only used to access the carrier hardware. Yes you dial into their servers and you pay them but they know nothing about your communication, only that it's encrypted.

Mikeus with VPN client-----------------------------VPN server-------Internet
..............................connected via Australian ISP to.................connects to

So the Aussie ISP knows that you receive x k/bit or x GB from that VPN server address. In fact they know that all you do with Internet access is connecting to that address. There're legitimate reasons for that.
But in reality you're accessing all of the web through the VPN server.

All other rules of the web apply of course. If you give your data to the wrong people no VPN can save you.

[Mikeus Caesar]

This sounds rather fascinating. Once i have some money to spend (burn ;D) i might try setting one of these things up for myself.

Please, tell me all you know, even if i don't understand it all right now i can always come back and read it later, and at a later point do my own research to further what you can teach me.

[R'as al Ghul]

Technical details like this are best looked up in Wikipedia.
But it's really simple. Since you understand proxies, just imagine a superproxy that can channel all your available bandwith.
Or imagine that your machine is not dialing into the Aussie phone system, imagine it's connected via a very long cable back to Britain and there you dial into the system.

[R'as al Ghul]

Another idea:
When connecting to wireless hotspots or using any wireless lan access that you don't know, for example on travels, you don't need to worry because the connection to the Internet that you establish using their infrastructure is encrypted and can't be intercepted by eavesdroppers and not even by the person offering the wireless connection.
P.S: American army uses VPN to securely connect to American servers even when using god knows whose phone line